Wisden Almanack takes a dig at the new ‘Big Three’ of ICC

Cricket’s Bible, the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, has come down heavily on the “Big Three” revamp of world cricket masterminded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, terming two of the three as India’s “English and Australian lapdogs”.Writing in the “Notes by the Editor” section of Wisden’s latest issue, Lawrence Booth said, “Cricket is appallingly administered and is vulnerable to economic exploitation by the one country powerful to exploit it and the two countries prepared to lend their plans credibility.”

Referring to the cricket boards of India, England and Australia, Wisden’s editor said, “The boards of India, England and Australia had quietly crafted a document which claimed to safeguard the game’s future while more obviously safeguarding their own.“In sum, the BCCI wanted an even larger slice of the ICC pie, and the ECB and Cricket Australia happily acquiesced, knowing their portion would grow too. The rest were assured they would be better off. And who could object to a world with more money for everyone?

“Here was a colonial style divide and rule. Here was the realpolitik of modern cricket. It was hard to read this any other way: the rich would be getting a whole lot richer.” Booth adds: “At its heart lay the BCCI’s desire not merely to oust the ICC as the game’s governing body but to wean themselves, eventually, off all but the most lucrative international fixtures, and to create more space for domestic Twenty20.”

Wisden, however, offered England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke the opportunity to defend the move, in which he said, “Following much discussion, with two meetings in Dubai and a third in Singapore, agreement was reached and resolutions were passed on February 8. “As so often in cricket administration, these were widely perhaps deliberately misinterpreted. We had to harden ourselves against uninformed and biased comment to deliver our vision for a better and more financially secure cricketing world.

“The Test game needed to be nurtured as the primary format. The FTP (future Test programme) has not been abolished but left to individual boards to arrange among themselves. It has been extended to 2023 with the top eight nations playing each other. And India do not get a veto